By increasing Britain's contribution to ESA when other nations are cutting theirs, the UK will attract more research contracts and the opportunity to improve the efficiency of our space tech factories, Osborne hopes.

ESA awards billions of pounds in contracts around Europe every year. The UK's previous investment in the Advanced Research In Telecommunications System, via ESA, has seen an overall return on investment of about six to one.

But overall spending in civil research has actually declined since 2010, government figures show. The area has seen a reduction of 5% in real terms spending. In two years' the overall science budget will have seen a cut of 10% in real terms.